The Fall

The Fall by Albert Camus, translated by Justin O'Brien, 147 pages

Disarmingly, the entire text of The Fall is addressed directly to the reader, screened behind an anonymous stranger a man named Clamence chances to meet in an Amsterdam bar.  The story of Clamence's life, his childhood and eventual career as a respected lawyer in Paris, his fall from grace and relocation to the slums of Amsterdam, as he tells it - with startling honesty and brutal directness - is the subject of the novel.  For Clamence has discovered his vocation as  a judge-penitent, making of his own wretchedness a magnifying mirror in which others can see themselves, their own imperfections and their own guilt.  He offers no hope of redemption or regeneration, only the mercy that comes from the recognition of our common humanity as totally depraved, the brotherhood of the fallen.

Clamence's is not so much a moral as an immoral universe, one where every crusading defender of the poor is motivated by the self-satisfaction this gives him, every lover of women driven by an urge to conquer and possess, everyone a hero until their heroism actually threatens their well-being or self-image.  It is a worldview obviously influenced by Camus' own experience of occupation and collaboration.  Yet it is also self-defeating, as Clamence's personal sacrifices in pursuit of the truth about himself contradict his own thesis.